


Allowed to Grieve

by moonsandstar_s



Category: RWBY
Genre: mentions of pyrrha ofc, nora and ruby's friendship is Pure and i would die for it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 05:04:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10073186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonsandstar_s/pseuds/moonsandstar_s
Summary: Losing a teammate isn't a wound that you can heal from, but it's a scar in which you can find common ground with another. When you know what it's like to lose a part of your found family, you might just find another person to grieve with.Or: the one where Ruby and Nora discuss the events during the Fall of Beacon.((Dedicated to Naomi. Love you, girl. Thanks for supporting me always.<3))





	

**Author's Note:**

> I am churning out fics at a ridiculous rate. Someone stop me this instant.  
> Productivity is hard, yo.

There was one benefit of journeying miles and miles during the day and camping during night: it was a more strenuous training regimen than anything you’d ever get at home. 

Of course, you had to deal with the cons of never having the promise of safety, and you had to contend with the ups and downs of the terrible weather on Anima, but there were moments like these that sweetened the deal. Team RNJR had walked around sixteen miles today, hitting two forests and one abandoned town, but luckily, they had managed to find a village with a cheap hotel. Even if there were roaches on the walls. But you had to take what you got, and after weeks of sleeping in rainy forests and waking up to bugs in their sleeping bags, nobody was going to complain about a few cockroaches. 

They had rented out a little room with two twin beds and a couch, bickering it out with who got what, and eventually they had settled for Jaune on one bed, Ren on the couch, and the girls sharing the other bed. Now, everyone was fast asleep. 

Except for Ruby.  

Exhausted from the day of walking, Ruby stared at the bedsheets, one hand walking through the shadowed dapples mixing with the silver moonbeams. Ren was curled up on the little couch, silent as a shadow. On Ruby’s other side, Nora fidgeted and kicked out, muttering insensible things in her sleep. And on the little twin bed, Jaune was snoring softly. As she watched, his expression shifted from calm to troubled, and the word _‘destiny’_ escaped his mouth. 

Ruby sat up on her elbows, giving up on the seductive promise of sleep. It was hard to find rest these days, anyways. She couldn’t shut her eyes without old memories wrestling for control over her dreams, old tragedies that haunted the recesses of her mind coming back to the vibrant present— and there were a lot of them. Too many. A sword protruding from Penny’s smoking remains. Yang lying unconscious on the ground and staring coldly out her window. Pyrrha gasping her last, hand clutched in a crescent at the arrow sticking out from her chest. Cinder’s amber eyes, Mercury’s, Emerald’s. Blinding silver light, turning the night to the brilliance of day and ripping her skull apart. 

But she had never been one to wake up screaming, and her makeshift team didn't know that the Fall still haunted her, dogged her memories every day and ran circles around her mind whenever she slept. Nightmares always forced her back to reality in a stiff, heart-racing silence. They had been that way ever since her uncle had told them Summer wasn’t going to come back. 

Ruby winced as an ice-cold foot prodded her in the spine and she craned around to see Nora kick out, her expression twisted up in a nightmare. She would’ve never described her schoolmate— and now her makeshift teammate, in a way— as someone who was angry. She had always seemed like the type of person who was bubbly, always seeing the best in people, and never considering an unhappy ending. She was never mad, always chipper— or at least, she had been, before the Fall. It had changed them all, in ways they were only just beginning to comprehend. It had also opened her eyes in more ways than one. Ruby could see now that Nora’s happiness just masked a lot of other emotions, and that her film of cheeriness was simply that: a mask, a coping mechanism. Wearing a mask of happiness was one thing, but living it was another thing entirely. 

“Nora,” she whispered, nudging her shoulder. “Nora. Wake up.” 

Nora shot awake, her blue eyes glittering in the darkness as she jackknifed up, looking wildly around the room before her eyes softened as they landed on Ruby. “Geez, sorry. What’s up? Did I accidentally kick you in my sleep or something?” She noticed Ruby’s expression and she looked taken aback. “Oh. Are you okay?”  

“Yeah, _I’m_ okay,” Ruby said, frowning, “but I don’t think you are.” 

Nora seemed to deflate. Ruby had always thought of her as the one who resembled her most in age— it was easy to forget that Nora was two years older. But right at that moment, she looked old, old, old, the shadows under her eyes darker than the gaps between the broken moon. “Is it that obvious?” 

“We’re alone right now.” Ruby pointed at Jaune, who had slipped into a deeper sleep, and Ren, silent as ever. “You wanna talk about it?” 

“I guess.” She let out a deep sigh that seemed to rustle straight from her lungs, looking as though she were about to refuse the offer. “Yeah, okay.” 

“I can tell what’s going on,” Ruby said without preamble. 

“Can you?” 

“You’re grieving,” Ruby explained. “It’s okay to grieve. You’ll never heal right, if you keep it inside… and that’s what you’re doing. None of us are going to judge you for expressing some sadness, every once in a while. You lost your teammate. I lost mine, too… but I know that Yang’s still alive, and Weiss is in Atlas, and I _know_ Blake is alive, somewhere out there. And I… I’m sorry that everything turned out this way, because none of us deserved it.” 

Ruby reached out and patted Nora’s hand in a conciliatory manner, fighting back a pang of overwhelming grief as another memory blossomed behind her eyes, when she had comforted another girl with bright eyes and red hair, one who seemed just as happy and light, but on the inside, was hiding so much desperate fear and confusion. She still missed Penny so much, with a fierceness that nearly took her breath away.  “A lot of people think I’m young,” Ruby continued, “that I don’t know what the world’s really like… and maybe I don’t. I still want to believe in second chances— that everyone is at least a little bit good, on the inside. Even after I’ve seen the terrible things people can do.” 

“You saw Pyrrha die,” Nora said, and her fingers dug into her knees hard enough to leave bruises, white-knuckled hands clenched over skin. 

“Yeah, I did. I know the things people can do. I’ve seen death. I saw three people die right in front of my eyes the night Beacon fell, Nora… and two of them were people I loved. That’s not something you can ever really recover from. I learned grief from my uncle. He’s never recovered from the things he lost, and I don’t want to turn out like him, sad and broken-down and ruined. And I learned grief from my mother, who died when I was just six years old, and from Yang… she fell apart after Beacon fell. Losing her fighting skill, her team, and especially Blake… it _shattered_ her. I learned grief from the friends I lost, but I’m not going to stop fighting, even though I know how bad it can get.” 

Nora’s gaze softened, and she reached out to touch Ruby’s shoulder. “You’re young, Ruby. Younger than all of us. Younger than me, Ren, and Jaune. And yet you’re still the leader. You’ve lost so much and given up nearly everything to come out here, and you still do everything you can to be strong for us, even when you’re feeling not on the inside. You’re the bravest of us all, in that way.” 

She scrubbed a palm between her brows, but it wasn’t enough to erase the stabbing memory of pain, the silver-eyed agony that had ripped her apart and put her back together as someone new. “I feel like I’ve lost everything, but the people I love… most of them are still alive. I— I can’t even imagine losing my teammates, not any of them. Not Weiss, not Blake, not Yang. Even if I lost them in another way, I know they’re alive. You know?” 

Nora’s eyes brimmed with tears, and her voice, when she spoke, was choked up and small. “I just— I know. I _miss_ Pyrrha, Ruby. I miss her all the time, every day. I know I look happy, and I try so hard to be happy for them— for you, for Jaune, for Ren. But it’s hard. It’s easy to be the one who’s grieving after a tragedy, because it’s expected, and people let you be sad… but to be the one who _can’t_ grieve, who has to be the strong one, because the one who used to be strong was killed— that’s more difficult than anything. They don’t tell you how _hard_ it is to be the one who’s always smiling, even when on the inside, you’re the farthest from smiling you could possibly be. 

“Professor Ozpin gave us these teams, but he didn’t tell us how we would come to need each other, and how they would become our family. Pyrrha and Jaune were the only real family I ever knew, and the only family I ever _had,_ Ruby, and she’s dead now. When someone you love is gone, it’s like waking up and being happy for a single instant before it hits you all over again, and you feel like you’re breaking apart, bit by bit. You’re lost, and you’re falling, fumbling your way through the dark and just praying that by the time you make it out into the light, you’re still recognizable as who you used to be. I’m thankful Ren and Jaune are still alive, and I always will be thankful. But I just wish one more part of my family could be here to make the journey with us.” 

“I miss Pyrrha too,” Ruby whispered, her throat constricted. “I hate having to wake up every day with the knowledge that if I’d just hurried a little more, been a little faster or stronger, maybe I could have saved her. Maybe she’d still be alive, but I’ll never know. 

“Stop that,” Nora shot back fiercely. “Pyrrha— she never wanted anyone to blame themselves, and especially on her part. It’s not your fault she died. If you had hurried, you might have been killed too… and then we’d be back two steps, and not one.” 

“It’s easy to say that,” Ruby managed. “It’s not as easy to believe it. But I’m trying. I swear, every day I’m trying to believe it.” 

“One day, you’ll be able to.” Nora hugged her, letting out a deep, shaky breath. “We lost Pyrrha, Ruby… and that’s not a wound that will ever go away. It’ll leave a scar. But we can learn to live with it and honor her by fighting the good fight as long as we can. It’s what she would have done.” Her blue eyes shone. “I’m glad you’re alive, and I know Ren and Jaune would say the same. We lost her, but we didn’t lose you, too. I’m glad you’re with us.” 

For the first time in months, when Ruby smiled, it felt good— it felt real, not like it had been pulled deep out of her. Something loosened in her chest, some heavy weight falling away from her shoulders, letting her breathe easy, if only for the moment. “I’m glad, too.” 

They sat there, together, looking off at the shadowy spaces out the dusty window as the rising sun broke over the horizon of Anima’s mountains, flooding the sky with gold and blue. Somewhere out there, there were answers, and there was a good destiny. A better one. They hadn’t found their peace yet— they hadn’t settled their losses, not of the Fall and not of those that they loved. 

But they all had each other, and for now, that was enough. 

 


End file.
